The rising trend of Facebook videos with oversized text

A recent trend we’ve noticed in the land of social media, particularly Facebook, has been the use of very large sized text taking up space at the top and bottom of videos.

One very clear advantage, possibly the biggest one, is that you can use much larger text than the standard title and description fields allow for. This enables videos to catch the eye much more easily than before.

On the left here we have a viral video from a few years ago, compared to a recently uploaded version of the same video, but this time with the use of oversized text:

This is also a potential way around Facebook’s maximum 20% text rule which applies for images used in promoted posts. Although no clear information or policy is available at this stage, we have noticed plenty of videos which include more than 20% as text, and seem to have been promoted without issue.

Please note: we have heard from various sources that the 20% rule may apply to images which functions as thumbnails, however this too is a bit of a grey area at the moment.

The text can convey the emphasis/message of the video. An issue facing many social media marketers, is not only getting people to play their videos, but to play them with the sound on. A few words can function as a teaser, tempting the browser to hit the ‘play’ button.

Although the video autoplay feature will get a video started while a Facebook users scrolls down their newsfeed, this feature will not play sound, and many mobile users actually have autoplay disabled in order to save on bandwidth usage.

While relatively new, this is a trend that has really taken off, and even without seeing insights & analytics, we can assume improved engagement on videos as a result of the added text.

As to whether or not this trend is here to stay, that’s something that will largely be dictated primarily by Facebook. Watch this space!